Social Media

Everyone's used to characters on the CTA. Now the CTA is using characters - about 140 of them - to its advantage. The CTA on Thursday celebrated the one-month anniversary of its Twitter and Facebook accounts. Since it launched its social media presence on Nov. 1, the CTA has garnered more than 3,400 Twitter followers and more than 4,700 likes on its Facebook page. "We believe this is a valuable resource for customers," said Brian Steele, the new CTA director of communications and media relations, who regularly updates the agency's social media outlets with a few other CTA employees.

Major League Baseball has already begun interleague play, and this season two teams are ready to ship two fans across the country. In the White Sox and San Francisco Giants ' #SocialSeries contest, a fan of each team will win an all-expenses-paid trip, with a friend, to the opposing team's city and ballpark when the teams play each other and serve as the team's social media correspondent. To win, fans must write an Instagram or Twitter post explaining why they should be the #SocialSeries correspondent for their team.

It's an undeniable fact that technology continues to change the way we live. In this day and age, we are definitely interacting with one another in very new ways. But fellas, in the case of pursuing a young lady, new doesn't always mean better. In short, stop asking for social media contacts when you first meet women! On a recent weekend, I overheard several inquiries from guys directed at women to the effect of, "Hey, are you on Instagram?" or "I'll find you on Facebook. " Don't get me wrong - I understand the convenience of the situation.

As soon as you're done watching and sharing, look up. "Look Up" is a video with a message of how much we miss by constantly consuming ourselves with social media and our smart phones. It has gone viral, garnering approximately 20,000,000 views since it was posted to YouTube April 25. The video, itself, is beautiful. Gary Turk, a London-based filmmaker, tells the story of a man who stops to ask for directions instead of consulting his iPhone. With a spoken-word rhyming convention that would make Dr. Seuss grin, Turk narrates the rest of the man's life with the woman...

For six days in September, several cities across the globe simultaneously host panels, events and more to celebrate Social Media Week (Sept. 24-28). Like social media but don't necessarily want to get involved as a techie, an entrepreneur or a social media geek? Here are a few events that might be worth your time, including a couple hosted by yours truly. *All events are free, but registration is required. Hurry--some are filling up fast! Tribune Sports: Social Media is Changing the Game 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., Monday Campbell Hall, Tribune Tower ...

Great news for high school students who can't seem to tear themselves away from their social media accounts--you can now go to college and spend four years earning a degree in social media. No, seriously. Newberry College in rural Newberry, S.C., recently announced it'd be the first accredited university to offer a major and minor in social media, incorporating courses in graphic design, business administration, psychology and statistics into a curriculum with specific social media courses.

You've heard what happened by now, and you've seen the tweet. No need to recount the "story," right? Right. (Ah, OK, here's a link if you really need it.) Let's get one thing straight: The tweet was bad. Really, really bad. Nobody is defending her offensive remark, not even Sacco, a public relations professional, herself. And while there's no defense for it, I can't help but feel incredibly uncomfortable with the way we, the Internet, responded to it. It's a shining example of how 2013 seemed to be the year of the Social...

Melodramatic? Maybe a little. But, seriously, your obsession with social media and your Instagram feed is probably sending you straight to Crazy Town. I tend to roll my eyes at every report about a new “study” just released that contains mostly alarmist “results,” because, much of the time, context is not provided and a “study” of a few hundred people by some crackpot scientist isn't the most reliable piece of information. That being said... a new survey conducted in the UK about the effect of social media on...

Solving the violence problem in Chicago seems so massive, so insurmountable to its residents. "I want to do something. But what can you really do?" said South Sider Bryant Cross, 28. He found that his morale for the city where he was raised has been low given the homicide rate. After reading stories about how January was a bloody month for Chicago, he happened to go through some old photos and came across one where he was angry and shouting. He slapped a caption on it and posted it on social media.

Update: Susan G. Komen for the Cure said on Friday it was retreating from a decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, and apologized for a move that thrust the world's largest breast cancer charity into a deeply politicized controversy. (Reuters) The decision of Susan G. Komen for the Cureto cut most of its funding to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America set off a social media storm this week. Some Chicagoans tweeted about anger and...

Early yesterday morning, I played a pretty terrible April Fools' Day prank on myself. Nursing a lingering groin pull, I accidentally applied Icy Hot to my nether region. Ouch. But hot-and-cold genitals were somehow less painful than the April Fools' Day pranks that I rubbed up against on social media. Case in point: a friend changed her Facebook relationship status to “engaged.” She, in her mid- to late 20s, has been dating a younger-than-21 year old for just over a month.

It's game over, but Matt “Nadeshot” Haag keeps staring at the TV monitor with a haunted, distant look while his teammates unceremoniously pack up their Xbox controllers. This is not the face you'd expect from someone who just won $120,000 playing video games, but Nadeshot consistently faces a Derrick Rose -level of scrutiny from the enormous world of professional “Call of Duty.” In the three years since he won the world title in 2011, Nadeshot has leveraged his charismatic personality and social media...

It can happen to any of us, male or female. It comes when you least expect it. But eventually, something will tip you off that things just aren't adding up. There you are, minding your business, hanging out with a buddy, and then you realize what's happening: While you thought you were just grabbing dinner with a friend or just catching a movie with a homie who happened to be in your area, you actually were being sneak-dated. (For the uninitiated, that's when a friend, trying to be more than friends, dates you without you even knowing it.)

Gilda Chan doesn't mind tweeting about the TV she's watching, the causes she supports, or her job as an inventory manager at Sears. And when her friends ask her about the rent she pays on her Gold Coast apartment, she's happy to tell them. (It's $1,700 a month.) But there are other aspects of her financial life that Chan, 33, is not comfortable discussing publicly, like her salary. "No, I'm more private than that," she said. "I am open to sharing my salary with my family and closest friends, but if a close friend...

Chicago has something of a YouTube problem. As social media sites grow in popularity and police investigators become increasingly savvy to them, more local residents are being charged with crimes after their alleged offenses wind up on social media. In just the past week, Chicago Police officials have charged two men with crimes related to videos posted to the public video sharing site. In one instance, a man was accused of threatening a city official's life in a YouTube screed against city-issued parking tickets.

I tried to totally avoid writing about, talking about or directing any attention to something that happened on the Internet -- ha, like it's a real place like a Panera Bread -- Monday. But, I basically get paid by the Internet, so, here I am. After a message from the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alerted students that classes would continue as usual on Monday despite record low temperatures, some began sharing racist (the chancellor is Asian) and sexist (also a woman)

Life is hard, man. Besides the daily struggles with paying those student loan s, waking up on time for work and always missing that Red Line train by just a few seconds, we counterintuitively struggle with Internet and social media dependency while constantly side-eyeing each other over passive aggressive Facebook statuses and mixed message tweets. Is anything real these days?! Sigh. OK, it's not that bad. But it's definitely annoying. Social media allows us to let our freak flags fly 24/7, but it also gives us free reign to fake happiness for others, hide behind emoticons and straight up...

The deaths of disco legends Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer brought out the best of society on social media. Just kidding - Twitter users even managed to rewrite history by declaring that Donna Summer sang “I Will Survive.” And then didn't survive. Should there be an understood system of etiquette for Twitter when celebrities die? We say yes, and so do a few of our readers on Facebook and Twitter . Here are a few tips, paired with some reader gripes, for our ongoing “How not to Behave Like a Jerk on...

You've heard what happened by now, and you've seen the tweet. No need to recount the "story," right? Right. (Ah, OK, here's a link if you really need it.) Let's get one thing straight: The tweet was bad. Really, really bad. Nobody is defending her offensive remark, not even Sacco, a public relations professional, herself. And while there's no defense for it, I can't help but feel incredibly uncomfortable with the way we, the Internet, responded to it. It's a shining example of how 2013 seemed to be the year of the Social Media Police, this elite force of Internet crusaders...

A year after their first foray into transitioning to an entirely outdoors music festival, Riot Fest organizers put all of their cards on the table to make 2013 the biggest year yet. They stocked the lineup with everyone from legends (The Replacements) to crowd-pleasers (Fall Out Boy), added Denver to the list of out-of-town expansions, kept ticket prices lower than any other fest and promised a full-on experience with the return of carnival games and sideshow performers. And then there was the guy who ran the Twitter account.